Throughout the year, we have once again enjoyed many vibrant academic discussions, energizing activities, and moments of mutual support together – thank you for being part of this journey! With this letter, we provide a brief summary of what AGORA affiliates have been working on this year. We warmly wish everyone peaceful and happy holidays!
New PhDs
AGORA has two new senior members, as our former doctoral researchers Tuija Kasa and Kalle Mäkelä have successfully defended their theses. Once again, warm congratulations to both on these important contributions. You can find their dissertations here:
- Tuija Kasa:
- Kalle Mäkelä:
Highlights from publishing news
Professor Kristiina Brunila and Daniel Nehring edited a 15-week international blog series, After the University?, exploring whether higher education is moving past the age of the university. Read the introduction in
Senior University Lecturer Birgit Schaffar-Kronqvist published an openly available monograph on the meaning of education,
Collaboration with Tampere University Higher education group has this year resulted in an edited book: International Organisations Inside Out. Professional, Organisational and Contextual Realities of Global Education Development, edited by Íris Santos, Elias Pekkala and Hanna Kontio.
As an editor of the journal Tiede & Edistys, Marja Peltola has edited, together with Professor Päivi Honkatukia, a Finnish-language special issue that explores complexities of scientific knowledge within youth research. The special issue
Of course, AGORA scholars have published extensively beyond the examples mentioned! You can find a full list of publications by AGORA scholars
Community building and activities in our Faculty
Community building within our own Faculty has remained important for AGORA. We have contributed to it through various activities and events.
Throughout autumn 2025, everyone has been able to enjoy the international lecture series
Our Doctoral Researchers Veera Tervo and Inka Tähkä organized ESELS 2024 Emerging Scholars in Educational and Learning Sciences – a conference for junior scholars in educational sciences at University of Helsinki in October. They coordinated the event in their roles as student representatives of the Doctoral School SEDUCE. Their term in these positions will end in December 2025, and we thank both for this long-term effort!
Senior University Lecturer Birgit Schaffar-Kronqvist and Professor Kristiina Brunila chair the Faculty of Educational Science’s Equality and Non-discrimination Group, which has been very active and visible in the Faculty this year. Among other activities, the group organized two Faculty-wide discussion events with several round tables on current equality and non-discrimination issues, bringing together students and Faculty staff.
Doctoral researcher Hillevi Vyyryläinen chaired a seminar Psychiatrization of education in our Faculty Research Day in February 2025.
The initiative project KOETUS – Anticipated and Alternative Futures of Finnish Education, led by Kristiina Brunila and funded by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, concluded this year. In spring 2025, it organized three open workshops on futures of education: on imagining futures at the time of polycrises (by Kristiina Brunila), on dismantling the current political and economic narratives and feelings of powerlessness (by Birgit Schaffar-Kronqvist) and on gender diversity (by Marja Peltola). You can still read about the project in
In November 2025, AGORA and KUPOLI – Sociology and Politics of Educatio once again came together for a Writing Retreat, this time at the lovely Värans Gård in Porkkala. Our annual Writing Retreats provide moments for working and getting inspired together, as well as a bit of shared rest amid the everyday hustle and bustle of academic life.
A group of AGORA researchers is currently participating in planning the national Men's Studies Day 2026 at the University of Helsinki, in collaboration with the Finnish Society of Men's Studies and the Faculty of Educational Sciences. The conference will take place on June 3–4, 2026, at Siltavuorenpenger – stay tuned for more details!
National and international collaboration
AGORA scholars are actively collaborating beyond of our own university, both nationally and internationally. This year, we organized events, delivered presentations, reviewed research, visited other organisations and hosted visitors, and engaged with many other activities with scholars, professionals, and NGOs near and far. Here are some highlights of the year:
As a member of the international advisory board of the EU Horizon-funded research project
AGORA has strengthened collaboration with the University of Johannesburg’s Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies through joint project applications and mutual visits by University Lecturer Hanna Kontio and Professor Emnet Tadesse Woldegiorgis. The visits have included public lectures in both Helsinki and Johannesburg. The team led by Kontio and Woldegiorgis is guest editing a special issue
Doctoral researcher Hillevi Vyyryläinen presented her work as an invited speaker at the event
Doctoral researcher Inka Tähkä visited Karlstad University and Södertörn University in Sweden in spring 2025, funded by the University of Helsinki's Women's Studies Support Fund and the Finnish-Swedish Cultural Foundation. Tähkä participated various seminars and presented both her ongoing PhD research and the research of the AGORA community. In October 2025, she also visited Stockholm University, where she was invited to speak in a seminar titled Young Masculinities and Political Subjectivity in and Beyond the Manosphere.
In October 2025, peer reviewers for the the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) promoted and ranked highly the formal panel session Education and security: Global Learning for Sustainable Development. Contributors to this panel are authors of the forthcoming volume on education and security that Susan Wiksten is currently editing for Edward Elgar Publishers. Wiksten will chair the formal panel session at
University Lecturer Marja Peltola and Kristiina Brunila are serving on the Steering Group of
Beginning in November 2025, Susan Wiksten serves as an Editor for the
Marja Peltola, Inka Tähkä and Hanna Ojala organised a workshop on men and masculinities as part of the national Gender Studies Conference. The session was so popular that some participants sat on
AGORA has welcomed numerous academic visitors from around the world, and we have enjoyed many energizing international encounters in seminars. In 2025, we hosted, for instance, Professor Julie McLeod (University of Melbourne), Dr Daniel Nehring (Swansea University) and Gabriel McCormick (Harvard University).
Funding news
Senior University Lecturer Birgit Schaffar-Kronqvist received funding from Svenska Kulturfonden for the project Tänkande skola. Increasing teacher’s skills to use more dialogical and reasoning methods in schools (2025–2027).
Doctoral researcher Janni Kurokallio received a one-year grant for her dissertation work from the Finnish Cultural Foundation in February 2025. In her PhD research, Kurokallio examines the heteronormativity embedded in Finnish comprehensive schools.
Postdoctoral Researcher Tuija Kasa received funding from the Emil Aaltonen Foundation for her postdoctoral research project Moral and Human Rights Education amid Polarization: Enhancing Moral and Political Imagination in Education in Dark Times, and from the Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation for work addressing law and politics in human rights education.
Doctoral researcher Hillevi Vyyryläinen received another one-year working grant from the Häme Regional Fund of the Finnish Cultural Foundation for her doctoral research. Vyyryläinen studies how things, people, services, and events are categorized as ‘neuropsychiatric’ in the fields of Finnish education and social work, and critically examines this categorization as a discursive tool of governance.
Warm congratulations!